Dance Umbrella is delighted to present the UK debut of this internationally acclaimed company. A former ballet company, it has reinvented itself under the artistic direction of Didier Deschamps and now enjoys a world-wide reputation for its contemporary and cutting edge repertoire.

For these performances the company will present three works from French and US choreographers. Mathilde Monnier and Jean-Francois Duroure’s Mama, Monday, Sunday or Always takes an ambiguous look at relationships. There's a fantastic chance to see Merce Cunningham's Duets. And former Cunningham dancer Karole Armitage's Le Chat de Schrödinger sees 24 spectacular dancers take to the QEH stage.

Didier Deschamps, artistic director of France’s Ballet de Lorraine, has chosen an excellent triple-bill for his company’s Umbrella 2002 programme and UK debut. The unifying link between all three pieces is American master choreographer Merce Cunningham. “As an ex-dancer I feel very close to his work,” Deschamps remarks. That Cunningham is the Ballet de Lorraine evening’s creative lynch-pin makes sense, given that his own eponymous troupe kicks off this year’s Umbrella with a world premiere at the Barbican Theatre.

Made in 1980 and set to percussive music by John Cage, Cunningham’s Duets is composed of six duets, each bridged by a brief entrance and exit by one of the other couples. It’s structurally simple, yes, but full of the complex, human beauty viewers can readily discover in his movement.

Karole Armitage, who danced in Cunningham’s company 1976-80, fashioned Le Chat de Schrödinger expressly for Ballet de Lorraine. It features two dozen dancers and lasts about as many minutes.

The title is derived from quantum physics. However, she’s using it “as an image to describe a state of the universe that is personal to me. I see the world as being made of chance and happenstance. It’s also made of patterns which are replicated and echoed throughout the cosmos. Each human being has its own inclination, its own choreography, its own grace within this pattern.

“We’re live by forces that we don’t understand,” Armitage continues, “both in our most intimate experiences as well as in larger ones.” Amplifying this notion, she has the dancers don masks “to invoke the idea of the limits of knowledge and vision. They enter and exit in a mixture of themes and variations, have encounters and then new ones. They’re both the grace and the unpredictability that is the human experience.”

Deschamps has his own take on Armitage’s work: “It’s a matter of speed, being out of balance, feeling the energy as an extreme. This piece requires a real and strong virtuosity. The dancers experiment with the notion of risk in different ways.”

Early in her career, French dance-maker Mathilde Monnier studied at Cunningham’s Manhattan studio. She also worked closely with the late, great Cunningham dancer Viola Farber. In 1986 she teamed with Jean-Francois Duroure to make Mama, Monday, Sunday or Always for Lyon Opera Ballet.

In this work, says Deschamps, “the universe is more narrative. The dancers have to play parts. The characters are in a film studio just after the shooting, and it turns into a kind of thriller.

It’s very poetic, with some funny moments.”

Deschamps has headed Ballet de Lorraine since 2000. He says he tries to maintain a hands-on approach, working with the dancers in the studio as much as possible. They represent a mix of nationalities typical of contemporary companies: two Russians, two Bulgarians, one Pole, a Brazilian, one from England and so on. The company is run democratically. “There’s no hierachy,” says Deschamps, “no ‘first’ dancer, nor a corps de ballet. Almost every one is able to dance all the repertory. I push everybody in that direction. It’s the best way for each to show their own qualities. I don’t really care if a dancer is tall or small. I’m looking for a good technical level, particularly in ballet, and a strong artistic feeling. I try to check if a dancer is really open to all kinds of dances, contemporary as well as classical, and if they’re able to develop a good attitude in a group.”

_________________This interview was posted by Stuart Sweeney on behalf of Donald Hutera and first appeared in Dance Umbrella News.

Donald Hutera writes regularly on dance and arts for The Times, Evening Standard, Time Out, Dance Europe, Dance Magazine (US) and Dance Now. He is co-author, with Allen Robertson, of The Dance Handbook.

Ballet de Lorraine at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night presented us with a richly varied programme of works. The evening began with Merce Cunningham’s Duets, an exploration of the classical pas de deux in contemporary form. Danced to a John Cage score of light tapping and castanets, six couples danced one of Cunningham’s most playful and attractive works, almost a kind of mirror image of balletic forms. This has become one of Cunningham’s classic works created over twenty years ago and has a timeless enduring quality so typically the mark of a true master.

The company has strong links with the Cunningham Company and the final work of the evening, Le Chat de Schrodinger, is choreographed by former Cunningham dancer Karole Armitage, using a percussive score by Gerard Houbette. Unfortunately the programmes for the evening consisted of no more than a cast sheet, but for those with an interest in quantum mechanics, how’s this for a link? www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html Seriously though, this was a hugely enjoyable work for the entire company displaying some astonishing virtuosity on the part of the dancers. Were they cats? I’m not sure, but the fitted hoods over their heads certainly gave them a feline appearance, though to me they also resembled hooded executioners. These dancers/cats leapt and pounced a treat and in the pas de deuxs the girls performed hyperextensions on point so extreme that they would have given dear Katherine Kanter apoplexy. Loved it!

Sandwiched between the beautiful Cunningham and his disciple’s spectacular finale was a real curiosity. Mama, Monday, Sunday or Always is choreographed by Mathilde Monnier and Jean-Francois Duroure. The music is by Kurt Weill and Bernard Herrmann (his music for Psycho no less) and I would again have appreciated some programme notes. The four dancers, two male, two female, are identically dressed in “flasher” style raincoats with turned up collars over white chiffon tiered skirts and part of the joke comes from how they divest themselves of their outlandish outfits. Under their raincoats they wear sober grey jackets, but getting rid of the skirts proves more difficult as all four find them caught around their ankles. Finally the skirts are deposited in a pile and one of the men decides to use them as a mattress. It’s a funny piece and clearly inspired by the world of film as the set resembles a studio with lights as the only props, and of course the moment the famous Psycho music starts up everyone laughs. Next time please provide some proper programmes and we would find this very original piece even funnier. Lack of programmes was however my only gripe as this is a massively talented ensemble with dancers of the highest technical ability presenting an unusually imaginative selection of works. I will definitely be looking out for this company in the future.

The South Bank provides two fine venues for dance in the QEH (800 seats) and the Purcell (about 300 i think) and although the Royal Festival Hall is far from ideal it does provide another venue for larger scale companies. Overall, the site hosts some of the most interesting dance events in London.

However, I agree with you Cassandra that the South Bank free programme handouts are the least helpful in the business and are poorly printed to boot.

THE French dance company based in Nancy has undergone a radical shift in the past few years. Where once it cast its mind back to the Romantic era, allowing Pierre Lacotte to reconstruct Filippo Taglioni’s 1839 L’Ombre, for example, today it has its eye on contemporary choreography. For the London visit of Ballet de Lorraine, the company brought a triple bill of works that show how far it has moved away from tutus and pointe shoes.

It has been only three years since Ballet de Lorraine fast-tracked itself from classical to contemporary status. In that time it has acquired Karole Armitage as associate choreographer and a whole new repertory, yet not surprisingly it hasn't quite left its history behind.

Dance Umbrella, which once shied away from ballet in its pursuit of cutting-edge dance, drew this year's festival to a close with Ballet de Lorraine from Nancy.

Dressed in black chiffon with masks over their heads, the corps pose provocatively in a frieze. Soloists break away, combining disco-dancing with pas de chats and pointe-work acrobatics to an insistent beat. Behind them, the frieze bounces about like an animated screen-saver, numbingly dull after the initial impact has worn off.

Graceful leaps forward Ismene Brown for The Daily Telegraph reviews the Ballet de Lorraine and the Ballet Freiburg at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Autumn is the season to gorge on dance, with the ballet companies' season launches paralleled by the Dance Umbrella festival. Thanks to the bounteousness of this subsidised enterprise - now 24 years old - London receives surely the widest array of dance of any city in the world in those two months.

This season's attractions began with the great American abstract-modernist Merce Cunningham and ended at the weekend with two leading European companies who try to take ballet forward, each in their own way.

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